HIV This Week

Chan KY, Stoove MA, Sringernyuang L, Reidpath DD. Stigmatization of AIDS patients: disentangling Thai nursing students’ attitudes towards HIV/AIDS, drug use, and commercial sex. AIDS Behav 2007 Mar 16; [Epub ahead of print]

This paper analyzes the interrelationships between HIV stigma and the co-stigmas of commercial sex (CS) and injecting drug use (IDU). Students of a Bangkok nursing college (N = 144) were presented with vignettes describing a person varying in the disease diagnoses (AIDS, leukaemia, no disease) and co-characteristics (IDU, CS, blood transfusion, no co-characteristic). For each vignette, participants completed a social distance measure assessing their attitudes towards the hypothetical person portrayed. Multivariate analyses showed strong interactions between the stigmas of AIDS and IDU but not between AIDS and CS. Although AIDS was shown to be stigmatizing in and of itself, it was significantly less stigmatizing than IDU. The findings highlight the need to consider the non-disease-related stigmas associated with HIV as well as the actual stigma of HIV in treatment and care settings. Methodological strengths and limitations were evaluated and implications for future research discussed.

Editors’ note: These attitudes likely reflect those of the society in which these nursing students live, which in the past has enacted repressive measures against people who use drugs while generally tolerating people who sell sex. The results of studies like this can help health professionals better understand the attitude shifts and behaviour changes they need to make to better serve their patients.